We work closely with customers, get to understand their business and develop solutions they love. The service has been the marketing and it has worked very well. The customers all come back and we grow together. We love it and they love it.

However, we were missing a great deal of the market that can't afford custom mobile solutions. Most solutions are too expensive and complex. After hearing this from many potential customers we decided to do something about it and developed MyEventApps. It allows event based organizations to get their own true native iPhone and Android apps for $750/year! We think this changes the game.

See what the Ottawa Citizen had to say this about this revolutionary product. The story got picked up all over the web including blogs and other papers like the Vancouver Sun. Our phone was ringing off the hook on Friday with interest from spas to malls and cleaning services. Things are going to get interesting.

If you wish to keep up with our story, please enter your email to the right and you'll get updates in your email when we have something interesting to share.

Ottawa Citizen, November 30, 2011

OTTAWA — An Ottawa startup is looking to democratize the business of building applications.

FaveQuest and its founder Allan Isfan has released its web-based MyEventApps program, which allows smaller businesses to create iPhone and Android apps in seconds.

To create an app for both Android and iPhone, a business needs to pay FaveQuest an annual fee of $750 …. click to read more

When I was asked to join a SXSW panel entitled “Prove it: Exploring Social Media ROI for business“, I thought “why don’t we eat our own dog food?”.

I proposed to the moderator, Keith Burtis, and the team ( Amber Naslund,  Sue Murphy, Jay Berkowitz, CEO of 10 Golden Rules 10 Golden Rules Blog and Justin Levy) that we loosely collaborate on  a mini social campaign to get some votes. We all initially tweeted the links to the SXSW panel picker but I also proposed we create some content (blog, video, slideshare …). The team chimed in with some great ideas and we proceeded to write some blog posts on the SM ROI subject and then promoted them through our networks on facebook, twitter, linkedin and so on.

Where did my traffic come from and how many people clicked on the panel picker outgoing link?

This is a very small experiment with a clear goal: get votes.

To learn from this, I also wanted know:

-which of my social networks drives the most traffic to my site for specific campaigns

-how does this compare to non social media traffic drivers

Keep in mind that the sample number is small (under a thousand visits in a couple of days) and this example is very specific to a particular situation.  Before sharing the results, here are my personal reach numbers:

-Facebook: 258 connections (I try to keep this small)

-LinkedIn:516 connections (I mostly connect with people I know)

-Twitter: 1386 followers (prefer high quality followers)

An now, here are my sources of traffic from google analytics (approx %) on the days I posted and promoted my SM ROI blog post:

-direct (i.e. people go directly to favequest.com). 50%

-twitter: 17%

-other blogs: 14% (mostly other people on panel + my other blogs)

-google: 6%

-delicious.com: 4%

-facebook: 3% (exclusively from me promoting through my status update)

LinkedIn (simple stats update) barely registered. @allain thought stumbleupon was going to win (didn’t even show up).

Ultimately, about 5% of the visitors voted.

DO NOT READ TOO MUCH INTO THESE NUMBERS and keep in mind that the sample size is small and very specific to my experiment. Nevertheless, I think the following observations are worth making:

-surprising small number via google (lots of possible reasons for that and worth investigating, focus on selecting keywords, better tags, better SEO … )

-our traffic spiked dramatically when the post was published

-communities you are active in will provide substantially more traffic (duh … I know) but it goes to show that being active in social networks can drive traffic to your site in an honest manner

-having the support of the community is absolutely HUGE (I attribute much of the traffic from twitter to retweets from my panel members and others, rather than just my direct followers)

-creating content that has value for that community pays off …. instant spike in traffic

-can sometimes be easy to correlate a social media action to a result … write a great post + support of key people and just watch your site traffic spike upl

-5% conversion (people clicking on SXSW panel picker link) was much lower than I expected but the reasons can vary significantly (didn’t put link in the right place etc … worth investigating)

-I can’t explain why such a large percentage is direct traffic. There was clearly a very sharp spike in our traffic when I launched the post and I didn’t promote it anywhere in the media?

The ultimate point of this post is to demonstrate a simple example where there is a clear goal (drive people to our SXSW panel picker to get votes), put together a specific campaign, launch and track what happens carefully. You may be able to determine what worked and what did not which will help you make better decisions in the future.

I’m also hoping you’ll share some of your own experiences and even data. I’m convinced social media is driving an increasing amount of high quality traffic but I want to PROVE IT!

Don’t forget to vote for our panel here: Prove it: Exploring Social Media ROI for business“. I’m watching you

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

Holy huge crowd batman

“Have you noticed how happy people are here”?

My business partner said this to me several times as we would stroll through huge crowds at the Ottawa Bluesfest this year. He was so right … people were there, many with their friends or families, really soaking it all in with a smile on their face. They looked genuinely happy.

It is easy to get lost in web tools, numbers and ROI equations and miss the real point. Live events are ultimately about bringing small and large communities together around a common joy, in our case live music. The pleasure comes just as much from being with friends and family in a lively and exciting atmosphere as it does from the music itself.

Happy Customer = Good

Happy customers come back and they bring their friends. You don’t need metrics  to know it is true. There are many ways to make people happy and social media could be part of the mix.

When we began talking about new elements to the Ottawa Bluesfest site, the predominant focus was to build something that would help people enjoy the festival even more (300 bands, hundreds of thousands of people … doing ok … but still). The idea was to add elements that would allow people to make better decision so they wouldn’t miss great acts, especially ones that they had not heard of. Answer the “who the heck is that” question, a well known problem.  In addition, music festivals are social events … people go together and part of the joy is to share a beautiful experience with people you like.

Not Just About Selling More Tickets

The “Buy Tickets” button is present but was never a priority and we didn’t even get measured against “Buy Tickets” clicks (though we counted them of course . This really surprised me and I was reminded of a valuable lesson:

“It is not about YOU! (the company/brand)”

There a few exceptions to this (musicians, charities …) but not many. Connect them with music they like, connect them with their friends, give them a voice, let them contribute … let them be part of something bigger and feel special. By all means, make sure the buy tickets button is easy to find but don’t let it get in the way.

Since we’re huge live music fans already, we did a bunch of things we thought would make fans happy:

• aggregated bios and videos of all the acts so even a child could check out a band they had never heard of
• helped people invite their friends by providing them an “invite friends” function
• provided ability to create a personal calendar and share that calendar with friends (email, post on Facebook …)
• allowed fans to see which performers their friends were going to (Facebook app function only)
• allowed them to contribute by sending videos and pictures that included on the site for all to see (people love to see their stuff highlighted)
• interview fans and post the written or video interviews
• live tweet and post pics of behind the scenes stuff (backstage, while the KISS stage was being assembled …). Lots of people felt like insiders. I got suspended from Twitter for a couple of hours likely for overtweeting
• interview performers somewhat on the fly and post the interviews as much as possible
• when we realized it was very time consuming to go through each of the nearly 300 acts one by one, we built the Bluesfest Jukebox so you could just listen for hours and pluck out bands of interest
• let people do as much as possible without creating an account but provided them extra value for registering only if it made sense

Many of these ideas came straight from Mark Monahan, the bluesfest executive director (the guy at the top) btw. The guy making the decisions and approving the cheques (checks for you American folks).

I’m really sharing the thought process with you to make a few key points:

• the customer comes first. Love them and seek to provide them value  first and foremost
• be sure to monitor and listen to make sure fans actually love what you are doing
• Social media tools, like the ones we used and built, can be a substantial, cost effective way to make your customers happy
• Clean bathrooms are important (not everything is about social media)

Love Your Customer!

By all means measure and tie whatever you can count to business imperatives… we do that all the time … but don’t forget the key imperative is to make your customers happy. Everything comes after that.

What are you doing in social media to make customers happy? What has worked and what hasn’t. You have the stand, please share …. I’m sure you have some great thoughts on this and experiences to share.

Please don’t forget to vote for our Social Media ROI panel at SXSW here panel picker . The panel is moderated by Keith Burtis and I’m joined by a stunning group comprising of Amber Naslund of Radian6 ; Sue Murphy of Jester Creative; Jay Berkowitz, CEO of 10 Golden Rules 10 Golden Rules Blog and Justin Levy New Marketing Labs. Be sure to check their posts on this very topic … you’re guaranteed to learn something valuable.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

1) Daily News

First surprise is the daily news page. This is the place to start your day, every day. Several of us will be reporting and posting from the grounds. This will include concert reviews, interviews with fans, musician and behind the scenes staff. We’ll also be posting videos and pictures and invite you to do the same. Check the news page for instructions.

I’ll be one of the reporters and so will Bill Love, my business partner in crime and our VP of Engineering (and co-founder).  We are joined by Todd Snelgrove, a great local musician.

2) Bluesfest Jukebox for LeBreton Flats performers

Last week, we launched Bluesfest Jukebox for the 90+ Bluesfest ByWard acts. We are already getting rave reviews and today, we launched Bluesfest Jukebox for the 220+ LeBreton Flats performers. I’ve been listening to the beta application and I’ve really been enjoying it. I encourage you to leave it on while you work and you’ll discover new acts you’ll not want to miss.

3) New Facebook Bluesfest Viewtube application

The new facebook “bluesfest viewtube” app is even more viral and fun than the first version. You can post performers to your profile and your friends will thank you. You can also quickly scan all the acts and see which of your friends are going to particular shows. You can even post your entire calendar (go to My Calendar to do that)

The traffic we’ve been getting the various viewtube applications has been phenomenal both in terms of total numbers but also in terms of engagement numers (time on site, performances added to calendars and so on). I sincerely hope you enjoy all the tools we’ve built for you especially hope you’ll enjoy all the great acts.

4) Bluesfest ByWard

Ok, this isn’t exactly a surprise, though Thornley was added recently. The Bluesfest ByWard starts Thursday night with awesome acts like George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic playing the main stage and a big personal fave for me, Matt Mays playing at Capital Music Hall (On the Hood was the first song I ever played in front of crowd)

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

A Nice Surprise

Totally derailed the conversation in a good direction. Finally sealed the deal late one night over the phone, settled on what we’d deliver, a time and a price and we were off to the races. Nearly 90 performers and DJs are coming from all over to play across 12 venues in the ByWard Market, including an outdoor stage!

Phase 1 of the Bluesfest ByWard site is finally up and it is pretty awesome.  We have more coming in the next few weeks too so please be sure to register for the site … even better, create an account so you can take full advantage of advanced features (access you calendar from anywhere, inviting friends, last minute alerts and more. Rather than tell you more about it, check it out for yourself.

http://bluesfestbyward.com

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest